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FMaz008
Asked: 2011-09-27 08:03:29 +0800 CST

How to remove many (200 000) files?

  • 772

I must remove 200 000 files (all of them) from a folder, and I don't want to delete the folder itself.

using rm, I get an "Argument list too long" error. I've tried to do something with xargs, but I'm not a Shell Guy, so it doesn't work:

find -name * | xargs rm -f
ubuntu shell terminal remove

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer
    $ find /path/to/folder -type f -delete
    • 36

  2. You are doing everything right. It is the '*' that gives you a problem (the shell is expanding it into list of files instead of the find). The right syntax could be:

    cd <your_directory>; find . -type f | xargs rm -f
find <your_directory> -type f | xargs rm -f

    (The latter is a bit less efficient since it will pass longer names to xargs, but you will hardly notice :-) )

    Alternatively, you could escape your '*' like this (however in that case it will also try also remove "." and ".."; it is not a biggie - you will just get a little warning :-) ):

    find . -name '*' | xargs rm -f
find . -name "*" | xargs rm -f
find . -name \* | xargs rm -f

    If your file names contain spaces then use this:

    find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f
    • 5

  3. The following command will delete all files from the current directory:

    find . -type f -exec rm {} \;
    • 3

  4. you can try 

    find /path/to/folder -type f -print0  | xargs -0 rm -f

    or 

    find /path/to/folder -type f -exec rm -f "{}" +
    • 2

  5. Kudos to quantas answer, here are some additions.

    If you like to delete files with a particular name pattern you can write it like this. Also added -print so you can see what's happening as the files are being deleted.

    sudo find /home/mydirectory -name "*.jpg" -type f -print -delete

    This for instance deletes all jpegs in mydirectory.

    • 1